Walking and Biking on their Own: Modeling Children's Independent Travel to Neighborhood Parks and Schools

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Joseph Broach, PhD candidate in Urban Studies, will discuss the results of his research, which models the propensity of children aged 6-16 to walk or bike to parks and school without an adult chaperone, extending existing work on children’s active travel in several ways: 1) focus on travel without an adult, 2) inclusion of school and a non-school destinations, 3) separate walk and bike models, 4) consideration of both parent and child attitudes and perceived social norms, 5) explicit inclusion of household rules limiting walking or bicycling.

Risk and Uncertainty: All Models Are Wrong But Some Are Useful

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Abstract: Models are used for many different purposes. Some seek to impart understanding of the system under study, while others seeks to understand dynamics. Most of the models considered in this course are also used for forecasting likely future levels of demand and its impact upon the built and natural environment. Unlike models of purely physical systems these models attempt to capture the interactions between people and institutions. Social systems are considerably more complex and chaotic. They are shaped by disruptive technologies, changing markets, economic cycles, and cultural influences that a difficult to predict, much less their subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) interaction effects. Uncertainty creeps into forecasting as a result, creating risk that a policy or investment may have unintended consequences, under-perform, or be short-lived. Transportation and land use modelers have typically only weakly accommodated such realities in their forecasts. Policy-makers and investors are increasingly demanding a more explicit accounting of risk and uncertainty in forecasting. This discussion will focus on how this will affect the practice of modeling in the future.

Speaker Bio: Rick Donnelly has over 25 years of experience in the modeling and simulation of transportation systems, from the urban to national level. His current interests include agent-based modeling of...

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Transport, Land Use, and Value

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Abstract: This presentation considers co-evolutionary process between the development of land and transport networks. Using data from the rail and Underground in London and the streetcar system in the Twin Cities, the empirical relationship is established statistically under several different contexts, and hypotheses about the positive feedback nature of the interaction are tested. Using insights from empirical observation, a numerical simulation is constructed to more formally test the relationship, and to understand the extent to which allowing networks to vary in response to land use (and land use to vary in response to network) affects the spatial organization of each. Models of network growth which fix land use, and models of land use which fix network growth, underestimate the degree of hierarchy that emerges in the system. Given transportation creates land value, and recognizing the problem of underfunding transport infrastructure, new funding sources can be used to increase transport investment, create additional land value, and improve social welfare.

Prof. David Levinson serves on the faculty of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota and directs the Networks, Economics, and Urban Systems (NEXUS) research group. He holds the Richard P. Braun/CTS Chair in Transportation. He also serves on the graduate faculty of the...

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Development of a Pedestrian Demand Estimation Tool: a Destination Choice Model

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There is growing support for improvements to the quality of the walking environment, including more investments to promote pedestrian travel. Planners, engineers, and others seek improved tools to estimate pedestrian demand that are sensitive to environmental and demographic factors at the appropriate scale in order to aid policy-relevant issues like air quality, public health, and smart allocation of infrastructure and other resources. Further, in the travel demand forecasting realm, tools of this kind are difficult to implement due to the use of spatial scales of analysis that are oriented towards motorized modes, vast data requirements, and computer processing limitations.

To address these issues, a two-phase project between Portland State University and Oregon Metro is underway to develop a robust pedestrian planning method for use in regional travel demand models. The first phase, completed in 2013, utilizes a tool that predicts the number of walking trips generated with spatial acuity, based on a new measure of the pedestrian environment and a micro-level unit of analysis. Currently, phase two is building upon this tool to predict the distribution of walking trips, connecting the origins predicted in phase one to destinations. This...

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Analytical efficiencies through the integration of modeling and simulation tools

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Summary: Linking planning and operations is vital to improving transportation decision making and the overall effectiveness of transportation systems. In this seminar Steve will discuss data and modeling methods supported by the PTV Vision software suite to facilitate integrated planning for operations.

Bio: PSU Alum Steve Perone is the President of PTV America, Inc. the North American subsidiary of German software provider PTV Group. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon he is responsible for supporting a diverse customer base of traffic engineers and transportation planners from over 1,000 public agencies, universities and consulting firms combined. His experience draws on time spent in roles as both a public sector employee and as a private consultant supporting public agencies. In his role he actively supports many ITE and TRB events and programs.

Land Use Models: An Introduction for Non-Modelers

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Abstract: This seminar will introduce land use models to non-modelers. It will cover the basic concepts of land use models and evolving approaches of land use modeling. It will examine how these models and the questions their users are being asked to respond to have evolved over the past two decades. In particular, it will discuss an integrated approach with transportation models that are increasingly used to inform land use and transportation planning. The seminar concludes with a discussion of the limitations and new directions of land use modeling research and practice.

Speaker Bio: Liming Wang, a post doctoral researcher at University of California- Berkeley, has a PhD from the University of Washington Interdisciplinary PhD program in Urban Design and Planning. He has developed key features of the UrbanSim model system, and participated actively in its application in numerous metropolitan areas. His expertise includes advanced econometrics of discrete choice modeling, model development, and software development in R and Python.

Modeling Transportation and Traffic in India

Modeling transportation basically involves development of relationship between the demand for transportation and the land-use, socio-economic and transportation system characteristics. The Indian socio-economic and transportation system characteristics are highly complex and wide ranging and hence, formulation and quantification of appropriate causal variables for modeling is a challenging task. The first part of the talk will focus on this aspect. The traffic on Indian roads is highly heterogeneous and the vehicles move on the roads without any lane or queue discipline. Hence, the commonly adopted procedure to model lane based traffic flow is not applicable for modeling this type of traffic comprising vehicles of wide ranging static and dynamic characteristics. The approach to modeling of this type of traffic flow is distinctly different. An appropriate methodology for modeling heterogeneous traffic flow has recently been developed at Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the same be will discussed in the second part of the presentation.

Dr. V. Thamizh Arasan, Professor and Head, Transportation Engineering Division, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India, has been involved in teaching, research and consultancy, in the area of Transportation Engineering for the past two and a half decades. Traffic Simulation and Travel Demand Modeling are the areas of his research interest, and he has guided several Ph. D....

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New FHWA VMT Forecasts Implications for Local Planning

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New FHWA VMT Forecasts and Implications for Local Planning

or

Post-Apocalyptic Zombies Ate Oregon’s Post-Recession, ATR Regression

Where: Room 204 of the Distance Learning Center Wing of the Urban Center at PSU

A summary of FHWA’s new national traffic trends assessment will be presented, including discussion of varied factors influencing forward-thinking forecasts. Examples of Oregon statewide vehicle miles travelled (VMT) and historic traffic trends from ATR stations in the Portland urban region and greater Willamette Valley will be highlighted. VMT, population and income data will be noted with implications on local transportation planning.

Andrew is an associate with David Evans & Associates, Inc., with over 28 years of experience in multimodal transportation planning with emphasis on sustainable community and Complete Street policy and plan development. He focuses on developing multimodal transportation plans with context-sensitive street standards and policies that implement enhanced bicycle and pedestrian use and circulation. His area of expertise includes measured pedestrian-access-to-transit connectivity, the implementation of...

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TRB Highlights: 3 PSU Student Presentations

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Moore Presentation (PDF)

Ma Presentation (PDF)

Summaries: 
Identification and Characterization of PM2.5 and VOC Hot Spots on Arterial Corridor by Integrating Probe Vehicle, Traffic, and Land Use Data: The purpose of this study is to explore the use of integrated probe vehicle, traffic and land use data to identify and characterize fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and volatile organic compound (VOC) hot spot locations on urban arterial corridors. An emission hot spot is defined as a fixed location along a corridor in which the mean pollutant concentrations are consistently above the 85th percentile of pollutant concentrations when considering all other locations along the corridor during the same time period. In order to collect data for this study, an electric vehicle was equipped with instruments designed to measure PM2.5 and VOC concentrations. Second-by-second measurements were performed for each pollutant from both the right and left sides of the vehicle. Detailed meteorological, traffic and land use data is also...

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Integrated Models: What They Are and How They Help

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Abstract: Integrated land use transportation models simulate the behavior of the spatial economic system and the interactions between the transportation system and the rest of the economic system. The essential elements of these models are explicit treatment of space in economic production and consumption behavior, both the space that is the physical areas that contain production processes and the space that separates different production locations and gives rise to the demand for travel and transport. They put travel within an economic context, and thus facilitate simulation of the impacts of transportation policy and planning actions and transportation conditions on the wider economic system. As such, integrated models can be used address complex policy questions that more limited transportation models cannot address, or cannot address well.

This seminar will set out the basic scope and form of integrated models and discusses several of the key advantages they provide for planning. Experiences gained in the practical applications of the Oregon SWIM and Sacramento MEPLAN and PECAS integrated models will be described. These experiences will be used to illustrate the added benefits arising with such models in terms of more efficient land use forecasting, more complete analysis of cumulative and indirect impacts and more holistic consideration of policy in general, more...

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